Mars Helicopter

The Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, is a small, autonomous aircraft that will be carried to the surface of the Red Planet attached to the belly of the Perseverance rover. Its mission is experimental in nature and completely independent of the rover’s science mission. In the months after landing, the helicopter will be placed on the surface to test – for the first time ever – powered flight in the thin Martian air. Its performance during these experimental test flights will help inform decisions relating to considering small helicopters for future Mars missions, where they could perform in a support role as robotic scouts, surveying terrain from above, or as full standalone science craft carrying instrument payloads.

Taking to the air gives scientists a new perspective on a region’s geology and even allows them to peer into areas that are too steep or slippery to send a rover. In the distant future, they might even help astronauts explore Mars. The project is solely a demonstration of technology; it is not designed to support the Mars 2020/Perseverance mission, which is searching for signs of ancient life and collecting samples of rock and sediment in tubes for potential return to Earth by later missions.